Doctor Who and the Pirates!

ARRRRRRRRRR! Ahoy mates! Gather round for a tale of spirited adventures on the high seas! The Doctor and Evelyn arrive on the good ship Sea Eagle just as she is raided and plundered by the feared Red Jasper - the scourge of the seven seas! Jasper is on the hunt for the fabled Ruby Islands where unimaginable treasure awaits, and he doesn't care who has to walk the plank for him to get his hooks on the map. It's a classic tale of rattling cutlasses, high drama, daring escapes, cannonballs, land hooooooo! and .... a musical number?

Hysterical! The odd time Big Finish will play a scene for laughs here and there but The Pirates is total pantomime bliss for the ears. The tale unfolds as Evelyn, eventually joined by the Doctor, returns to see a struggling student of hers and tells a tale of the adventures that ensue once the TARDIS materializes below decks on the Sea Eagle. There seems little point to Evelyn doing this at first, as the story doesn't affect or involve her student, but eventually the logic is there, and I am not going to ruin it with a spoiler.

So there I sat at the Laundry Express at the corner of Davisville Avenue and Yonge Street listening to this as my whites tumbled about in sudsy bliss, and I was in stitches, particularly at the opening of episode three when the Doctor breaks into song. Yes, it's almost Pirates of Penzance but with a Gallifreyan slant, and Evelyn's horror at the Doctor warming his vocal chords is just fantastic. Pure fan bliss!

And there's no underlying theme to delve into here. There is no moral of the story. There is, like I said, a simple point to why the story is told like this, but aside from that it's a story for its own sake, just to be listened to and enjoyed and laughed with. Oh clever clever clever.

NEXT EPISODE : PROJECT LAZARUS - Episodes 1 and 2